This invention relates generally to multimedia data, and more particularly to multimedia data embedding.
With the increasingly popularity of multimedia-capable computers, and the digitalization of multimedia in general, the importance of multimedia data embedding has become more important. In one type of multimedia data embedding, a key, also known as a watermark, is embedded into multimedia data, a process which is known as watermarking. This allows questions of ownership of a given piece of multimedia dataxe2x80x94which may be widely distributed by virtue of the Internet, for examplexe2x80x94to be resolved, by attempting to decode the key from the multimedia data. That is, by watermarking multimedia data, the data owner can determine whether a suspect piece of multimedia data is his or hers by determining whether the watermark is present in the suspect data.
For example, a record company, prior to making its music selections available on the Internet for widespread purchase and use, can first watermark the data representing a music selection. If a site on the Internet is providing bootleg copies of the music selections, but claims that the copies are not in fact owned by the record company, the company can prove that they are indeed owned by it by showing that the watermark is present in the bootleg copies. Therefore, watermarking has applicability to audio multimedia, as well as other types of multimedia, such as image and video multimedia.
In one embodiment, a computer-implemented method first By receives a vector x of N data samples, where x=[x(0)x(1) . . . x(Nxe2x88x921)] and represents multimedia. Next, the method receives a vector p, where p=[p(0)p(1) . . . p(Nxe2x88x921)] and represents a pseudo-random sequence. Finally, the method generates a new vector xxe2x80x2 in which the vector p is embedded in the vector x, such that x=[xxe2x80x2(0)xxe2x80x2(1) . . . xxe2x80x2(Nxe2x88x921)] and xxe2x80x2=x+aq, where a comprises a perception-based scaling factor and the vector q comprises a perceptually weighted pseudo-random sequence based on the vector p.
In at least some embodiments, the resulting new vector xxe2x80x2 represents a watermarked version of the multimedia data represented by the vector x. The watermarked data may then be distributed by the owner thereof, with the assurance of knowing that should an ownership issue arise, the key or watermark as represented by the vector p can be decoded from the watermarked data, to prove ownership. The multimedia can be audio, image or video; the invention is not so particularly limited.